Scriptural Significance
by roofietoof
Summary: Conclusion to my Mythological References stories.


"Mom?" Eighteen year old Sarah Adama called out as she bounded into the house. "Are you home?"

"I'm in here, Sweetie." Kara Adama called back from her place at the kitchen table.

"What are you doing?" Sarah said as she came and sat on the table, her legs dangling down.

"I'm writing a letter." Kara said looking at the piece of paper in front of her. Then she looked up at her daughter as she sat on her perch. "Sit in a chair, would you? What, were you raised by wild animals?"

"I've heard you and Dad referred to as a lot of things, but I don't think 'wild animal' was ever one of them." She said as she finally took a seat in a chair. "Who are you writing to?"

"Not important." Kara replied, dropping her pen on the table. "It's not like I could ever send it to them."

"Okay." Sarah decided to let it go. "Where is everybody?"

"Your sister is at Cameron's house. Apparently Cameron's new stepfather is trying to score points and he bought him a fancy video game system. Suffice it to say your sister won't be home for hours."

"What about Dad?" Sarah asked as she reached into the bowl on the table and grabbed an apple.

"Your father is on his way back from the base with Helo. He told me to tell you that he was sorry, but that the meeting ran late and that he would take you up flying when he got here."

"As long as it's not too late. I have plans." Sarah said as she bit into the apple.

"With your punk boyfriend?" Kara asked teasing non-chalantly.

"He's not a punk, Mom."

"He has an earring. That makes him a punk." Kara said looking up at her.

"That's a rather broad definition, _Mother._" Sarah laughed. "Besides, you have tattoos."

"And you're gonna use me as an example of how to impress parents?"

"Grandpa loved you."

"Is that why he threw me in hack so many times?"

"Technically it was Uncle Saul that threw you in hack." Sarah said as she leaned up and looked at the piece of paper in front of her mother. "There isn't anything written on here. Were you really writing a letter or were you just looking out the window onto the ocean?"

"Caught me." Kara laughed. "I was actually _going_ to write a letter, but I guess I just got distracted." She said as she wistfully looked out the window of her kitchen to the view before her. "You know we only bought this house for the view. The rest of the house is way too small. I mean, your room and your sister's are shoeboxes. But your father and I don't mind you living like sardines as long as we can sit here and watch the ocean over the cliffs."

"So it's nice that you thought of the whole family." Sarah giggled.

Kara laughed too. "Sometimes I think we moved to Half Moon Bay just to be near the ocean."

"So it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that one of the largest air bases in the country is six minutes away?" Sarah teased.

Her mother looked at her, feigning innocence. "I don't know what you're referring to."

"Miramar? You know that big flight school? You can hear the planes take off and land from our back yard? It's the place where you and Dad and Helo and Cally and Tyrol go to work everyday?"

"Oh, _that_ place." Kara laughed. "That might have something to do with it."

Sarah took another bite. "Does this view remind you of home?"

"This is home, Sarah." Kara stated firmly. "And before that _Galactica_ was home."

"You know what I meant, Mom. Does it remind you of Caprica?"

"Not really." She answered truthfully. "Caprica's a little different. The water is bluer here. The cliffs are sharper. And of course there is only the one moon."

"Sometimes I wish you would talk about it more." Sarah said apprehensively.

"Why?" Kara asked gently. "It was in the past. And my real life didn't really begin until I left that planet."

"Not everybody feels that way. They think it's unfair that they have to….."

"That they have to hide who they are?" Her mother answered for her. She sighed. "We're not hiding who we are. We're just hiding where we came from. Would I be any more Kara Adama if I told people that I was born in Delphi on the planet of Caprica, than I am when I tell people that I was born in……..where do I tell people I'm from?"

"Merriam, Kansas." Sarah answered.

Kara nodded. "The answer to that question is no. Location and origin doesn't change who we are. I still am who I am. I still love who I love."

"Will we ever get to tell people the truth?"

"Maybe someday. But by that time your father and I will be dead, along with everyone else that was born on the Twelve Colonies. And you and your sister will have grandchildren."

"Because the President wanted it that way?"

"Your grandmother, despite all her ideals and faith in mankind, still had a very realistic streak to her. She knew that the people on Earth might not take too kindly to strangers coming onto their planet. She knew they might be afraid, and she knew that fear can make people do strange things."

"Yeah."

"She knew she was going to die before we got here. It was part of the deal. 'The dying leader would lead her people to salvation but she would never live to see it herself.' So before she died, she made sure that Billy, and your father and your grandfather, promised to do what she asked."

"To keep it a secret." Sarah stated the answer before her mother could finish.

"Yes. No one knows who we are. There are important people high up in the military and in the government that know we exist, but no one has a list. We didn't have to give our names, or register, or be branded like cattle. We were allowed to ingratiate ourselves into this planet. Some people stayed here in America, some people went to France or Japan. Gaeta even moved to someplace called Borneo. Where the hell is that anyway?"

Sarah shrugged.

"And by the time the government ever revealed to the people that we existed, we would have been living on this planet for years and years. We would be married, we would have children, businesses, homes, and no one would be able to tell us apart from people that had families that had been living here for millennia."

"And the government allowed this because we were no threat to them?" Sarah asked.

"Well, we weren't a threat. There were only about 75,000 of us when we got here. Compared to the billions of people that lived on Earth, they were more of a threat to us than we were to them. So they let us stay, let us live in peace, and in return they got all of our technology and 75,000 new citizens that they could collect taxes from." Kara winked at her daughter. "It wasn't hard to convince them."

Sarah leaned over and put her hands on top of her mother's. "Who were you writing the letter to, Mom?" She whispered quietly.

Kara sighed and closed her eyes. "To the man that made it possible for us to live here."

"The _man?_" Sarah asked surprised. "I thought Grandma did that?"

"Your grandmother made it possible for us to _find_ Earth. It was her diligence that made us use the Arrow of Apollo to discover the map to Earth. It was a star chart: it told us where the place was that we were going to, but it didn't tell us how to _get there_ from where we were. It didn't tell us how long it would take or even what direction to go in."

"You didn't even know what direction?" Sarah said incredulously.

"No." Kara laughed.

"How did you figure that out?" Sarah asked intrigued.

"It was funny, really." Kara giggled. "You were very little, and you had just started to laugh, and your grandparents were doing anything that they could do to get you to laugh. So the President started telling jokes that her father had told her, and finally you started to giggle. And then your father mentioned that Mr. Roslin must have been a very funny man. The President just offhandedly corrected that Roslin was her _married_ name. It was her ex-husband's name and she had just never bothered to change it." Kara started laughing so hard that her daughter started to worry if she could breathe. "We had been killing ourselves over which direction to go for months, she felt so stupid when we finally realized."

"Realized what, Mom?"

"The Prophet really did show her people the way. Her name was Laura _West_ Roslin."

Sarah's eyes got wide and her mouth dropped. "Her maiden name was West?"

Kara nodded, clutching her chest in hysterical amusement. "We found our direction."

"How did you know which direction was west? What did you use as a compass?"

"Your grandfather stood at his usual place in CIC and looked up at the ceiling. He said he'd made every other decision there. Why not use that place as true north?"

"He was taking a big risk." Sarah laughed. "There was no guarantee that he would be right."

"There were never any guarantees. And we took a big risk in everything." Kara whispered as she reached up to touch her daughter's cheek. "We even took a big risk in having you. But everything turned out okay. It took us several years, but we got here."

Sarah looked deeply into her mother's eyes. "So who is the man?"

"Gaius Baltar." Kara whispered almost reverently.

"Dr. Baltar? What did he have to do with it?"

"We found Earth. But only a few people were told, and we started to quietly make arrangements to make contact. We didn't know what we would find, so we didn't want to get anyone's hopes up. Then the President started waking up in the middle of the night, she would have terrible nightmares. And one day she told us that we had to leave. We had to leave the system and never come back. Because the people on Earth were unprepared, and if we stayed we would lead the Cylons right to them. She said if Earth was destroyed it would be our fault, and she would rather have us wander the galaxy aimlessly for eternity than have that on our hands." Kara paused as she took several deep breaths. "So we started to get ready to leave this system. Then Dr. Baltar asked to speak with us."

"Wasn't he……you know…._crazy_, by then?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. He had been talking to people that weren't there for years, but the President had always listened to him for some reason, even when he was making no sense. So she and your father went to see him in the padded cell that he had been living in."

"And?"

"He _knew_ that we had found Earth. There was no possible way that he could have known, but he did. Then he asked after you."

"Me?" Sarah gasped surprised.

"Your father told him that you were fine, you were seven years old by then. And then your father mentioned that I was pregnant with your sister. Dr. Baltar then told your father that he must know what it was like to love someone so much that he would do anything for them."

"What was he talking about?"

"No one knows." Kara said. "Then Dr. Baltar said that he was asked to be a key figure in implementing a plan, and love had blinded him to the true nature of that plan. But now he knew the cost of being a part of it was too high, and that it wasn't a price he was willing to pay. He said that he had inadvertently destroyed so much in his life, but that if he allowed the plan to take effect, he would be intentionally killing billions of people, and he couldn't be a part of that. Then he turned to an empty spot in the room and said 'I'm sorry'. He then directed your father to a disk that had been kept in his old lab."

"The disk that held the virus? The one that destroyed the Cylons?" Sarah asked.

"It wasn't a virus. We had used viruses before, and they had helped, but they'd never_ completely_ destroyed the Cylons. We knew if we left any Cylons operational that we couldn't go to Earth, the risk would be too great."

"So what was it?" Sarah whispered.

Kara closed her eyes and let out a breath. "_A manual_. It was a program manual on every Cylon mainframe in existence. And in it was a kill-switch. Gaeta explained it to me; it was something that people who had intimate knowledge of the program could access through a back door if it became irreparably damaged or spawned out of control, so that they could stop the program. It would completely wipe it out, then the programmer would have to go back in and rebuild from the ground up."

"So everything would crash?"

"_Everything _would crash. It was better than a virus. Viruses had to be programmed in from an outside source; this was something that already existed in the program. It was inherently built in, and only people who knew everything about the system would know how to activate it."

"So Dr. Baltar knew all of this because of the work that he had done on Cylon detection?"

Kara shook her head and her eyes filled up to the brim with tears.

"Mom?" Sarah whispered.

"It was too much information. There was no way that he would have known so much if he hadn't been working with the Cylons all along."

Sarah jerked. "Why didn't I know this? Why doesn't anybody else know that he was a traitor?" She seethed.

"Because he wasn't." Kara stated purposefully. "He gave up his life to help us. He was a hero."

"Okay." Sarah said numbly.

"There wasn't even a battle. We just uploaded the kill-switch and suddenly everything Cylon imploded before our eyes: basestars, raiders. And if anyone suddenly dropped dead in front of your very eyes, you knew you had found a humanoid-Cylon model that had been hiding in the fleet."

"Dr. Baltar died of a heart attack right after that, didn't he?"

Kara nodded. "We stayed on the outskirts of this system for several months, just making sure that they were really gone……….but your Grandma knew. Towards the end, her visions become more frequent, clearer. She knew that every last Cylon had been destroyed, and that humanity would be safe." Kara gulped. "She died while we were waiting. Then a few months later we came here. And your sister was born here."

"Mom? Doesn't that…….doesn't that make you madder?" Sarah asked, she continued as she saw the question in her mother's eyes. "Doesn't that make you angry that even after all that we've been through, after all that we did for the people on this planet, we still have to keep this expunged from history?"

"You think it will be? You don't think that there are Colonials out there telling _their _children this story? Just like I'm telling you? It will be told. The greatest stories known to man are not the ones that are shouted from rooftops, but that are passed down from one generation to the next at the foot of a child's bed. We just can't tell people that are unprepared on how to deal with it."

"Why do we think they wouldn't understand? Maybe they would." Sarah said making her argument. "In their scriptures is a story of a people being driven by tyranny from the only home they'd ever known to a land that they had never been. They're journey was long, and arduous. And they were led by a leader that would die before they got there. Our story has scriptural significance. Maybe they could identify."

"Maybe." Kara agreed. "I've read that story too, and it struck a nerve. But that isn't the story that I like the best from that book. Do you wanna know what is?"

"Yeah." Sarah said.

"The story that I most identify with is about two women: an older woman and a younger one. These two women are living in a place, and something bad happens there. The two women lose everything. So the older woman leads the younger to a far away land, where they can start again with members of their family that they have never met. But on their way the older woman begins to lose hope. The journey is too long, too hard. And she tells the younger woman to go back, to leave her. Because the older woman doesn't even know what they will find when they get to where they are headed. She doesn't know if they will even be accepted there. But the younger woman doesn't leave; she stays with the older one, because she has faith. Do you know what the younger woman says?"

"No."

"She says: _Don't tell me to leave you, don't tell me not to go after you. Where you lead me, I will follow. My home will be the place that you take us to. These people will be my people, this land will be mine."_

"Yeah, that's……." Sarah said as she started to cry. "…..that's nice."

Kara wiped away the tears coming from her daughter's eyes."The two women got to that new land, and they made a home there. The younger woman had a family and that family was very important. The younger woman's great-grandson became the greatest king that country had ever known."

"What was the name of that chapter, Mom?"

"The Book of Ruth." Kara smiled.

"That's…."

"Your sister's name, I know. I always think of your grandmother when I look at her." Kara sighed. "We scattered your grandma's ashes off that cliff over there, she told us before she died that she wanted to be laid to rest near our home, since we……..since we were her_ family._"

"And then you spread Grandpa's ashes there when he died last year."

"Yeah. They never……..their relationship wasn't quite as sordid as some gossip-mongers led people to believe. But she was the matriarch, and he was the patriarch; it was only fitting that their family be able to go to the same place to pay their respects."

"Yes. I agree." Sarah smiled as her thumb stroked the top of her mother's hand.

"Our people are gonna do great things on this planet, Sarah. And yeah, some people think it's unfair that we had to change our identity to be safe, hide where we came from so that we could find a home here, give up the stars so that we would have ground beneath us." She paused. "But you know what? You and your sister get to play in the sunshine, and you get to pick out shapes in the clouds in the sky. And we can still see the stars; only now when we do it we have grass beneath our feet. I think it's a fair trade.The personyou are isn't about where you've been. It's about where you are, and where you are going."

"And we'll _never _give that up." Sarah finished for her.

"HELLO? Anybody home?" Lee called out as he opened the front door, jerking the two women out of their conversation.

"Where is everybody?" Helo called out too.

"We're in here." Sarah yelled back at them.

"There you are." Helo said as the two men walked into the kitchen.

"There's my sexy lover-man." Kara said.

"Well hello to you too, Sweetheart." Lee replied.

"Yeah. I was talking to Helo." Kara deadpanned as Helo doubled over.

"That's real cute, Starbuck." Lee said as he wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. "Real cute."

"You ready to go?" Helo asked Sarah.

"Is he gonna let me fly upside down this time?" She asked pointing to her father.

"Yeah. Add on _another_ eighteen years to your life and I might consider it." Lee said still kissing Kara's neck.

"Will you stop that?" She said as she batted his hand away from where it was heading, higher up from her waist. "Our child is in the room." She soothed his look of rejection by reaching her head up to kiss his chin.

"Like she hasn't already done worse with her boyfriend." Helo chuckled.

"Hey!" Lee chastised him. "There are some things a father just doesn't want to think about."

"Lee still wants to think she's innocent." Kara added.

"Maybe I wouldn't be so innocent if Lt. Colonel and Major Adama over there would raise my curfew past nine o'clock." Sarahpouted to Helo.

"It's your fault." Kara pointed at her daughter. "If you'd told us you were casually dating this guy, we'd have let you stay out as late as you wanted. But you made the mistake of telling us you were in love with him, therefore we don't want to take any chances."

"She's going off to college in two months. What are you gonna do to keep her in line then?" Helo teased.

"They're called hidden cameras, Helo." Lee answered. "You can order them from _The Sharper Image_ catalogue."

"Fine. Fine." Helo said raising his hands. "We're burning daylight, we should go. Unless you wanna finish your letter?" Helo said pointing at the paper and pen on the table.

"You writing someone?" Lee asked looking at his daughter.

Kara opened her mouth to speak but Sarah cut her off. "Yeah, Dad." She said picking it up. "I thought I'd write to _Aunt Ellen._ I thought I'd skip college and see if she could get me a job dealing Blackjack at that casino in Vegas that she dances at. I hear they make good money."

"That's real cute, Sarah Adama. Keep it up and the only thing you'll be flying is a flag of surrender five years from now when I finally decide to let you out of the basement." Lee said. "You coming?" He asked his wife.

"Ruthie and I will be there in about two hours, I still have to wait for her to get home. Besides, I wanna watch this new thing that's coming on the Sci-Fi channel. It was created by Ron Moore."

"Ron Moore? The guy from the _Geminon__ Traveler_?" Lee asked nervously. "Does he let slip any……?

"Billy and Dee called from Washington, they get it three hours ahead there because of the time zone thing, they said he never _blatantly _reveals anything, but that we may have to watch him." She answered.

"Are we gonna go, or what?" Sarah called from where she and Helo were standing in the entry hall.

"Bye. Love you." He said kissing Kara's cheek.

"Lee?" Kara said, grabbing his hand to stop him. "The letter was mine."

He looked at her. "What did it say?"

"You can read it if you want." She said handing it to him.

His eyes scanned over the paper. "Short letter."

"Nothing much else to say." She said as he looked up at him. "We won. And we're here partly because of him."

"Alright." He said handing it back to her, kissing her again, and then walking away. He turned back around, smiling at her."You could always add '_You__ smug bastard'_ on the end of it."

She laughed. "Go."

As he closed the door to the house she looked down at the paper. Written in her handwriting were the words:

_Dear Gaius,_

And below those words were the words:

_Thank You._

She crumpled it up and threw it away.

-The End.


End file.
